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[Clive Williams]

Thanks everyone; on to the next theme! As ever, please feel free to post any late contribs to the end of this thread, no problem!

[Jesse Smith]

My very late contribution (which annoys me to do, because I think hardly anyone sees these once the month is no longer current).

The Banks of the Dee

Helena got to this one before me last month, but hopefully mine is sufficiently different in style. With a set of Morris slows thrown in at the end because why not. This one gave me a surprising degree of trouble to get where I wanted it. I guess because as a double jig there's really no place to rest in between phrases.

[Anahata]

Well I saw it...
And a very morris-worthy and danceable rendition too!
Also good to have some historical detail about the tune.
It was on my list of possibles for last month.

[Peadar]

 Nice tune.
Before I listened to it I wondered which Dee....as I listened to it decided it could only be the Welsh Dee...so kind of surprised to read that "The Banks f the Dee" is a Scottish song. Have you got the words?

[Jesse Smith]

Anahata, thank you for the compliment! I had to work pretty hard on this one to get it to the point where it started to feel musical to me. I picked it cause I thought, "You know, Morris tune, how hard could it be?" but there's quite a distance between learning the notes and getting the right rhythm and fluidity.

Peadar, I found the words here: https://www.americanrevolution.org/war_songs/warsongs17.php. The song was written John Tait in 1775, from the perspective of a woman whose lover was shipping over "to quell the proud rebels" in the American colonies. The "proud rebels" took to the song as well, and it was popular in the colonies, including some parody versions with lyrics telling the Tories to go back home to the banks of the Dee.

I assumed the Dee is the river in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, but I read somewhere that John Tait was actually Irish, and there is a River Dee in eastern Ireland, so who knows, really.

The tune was originally used for an earlier Irish bawdy song called "Langolee". I saw a suggestion online that the tune was originally written by Handel before it had any words attached to it, but I haven't been able to find any other source for that idea.

[Rob Lands]

Lango Lee is in lots of manuscripts including Roose.0510  where it was called New Lango Lee. My notes on that "transcription" were
N:This is the tune to a ballad of the same name. The tune is in the
N:'The Compleat Tutor for the Fife' (London, 1770) and
N:'The Compleat Tutor for the Hautboy' (London, 1770).
N:The "New" may connect it to new words for the ballad as the tune can be found without "New".
N:The tune is also very similar to 'Banks of the Dee'.
B:John Roose, Manchester 1850

I didn't find the connection with Handel at the time, that interesting.  The notes made are just a start indicating it is pre 1770.

[Tone Dumb Greg]

Another late entry. I didn't think this was up to posting standard, but I just listened back to it and it's not as bad as I thought so I decided to post it, instead of deleting it.

https://soundcloud.com/greg-bradfield-smith/down-the-burn-davie-lad

I got the tune from from Joshua Jackson's book. I've never heard it played by anyone else, but I'm sure it must have been.

Down The Burn Davy Lad first appeared, as a song with a different tune, in William Thompson's Orpheus Caledonius of 1825 and is believed to have been composed by Robert Crawford, who wrote "Tweedside". The last verse, which contained rather tame references to ladies sticky out bits, was considered unfit for the ears of polite, late 18th C society and Robert Burns was asked, by the later Thompson, George, publisher of numerous musical works, to write a new verse to replace it, which he did after some persuasion, in September 1793.

At some point  the song had acquired a different tune...this one, which is the tune Burns used. Burns was told by his friend, Robert Riddell's father, that this air was composed by David Maigh, the keeper of the Laird of Riddell's blood slough hounds.

Here endeth the lesson. I love learning the background to these old tunes.

[David A Hill]

Boats float on water and islands are surrounded by the stuff so here's my version of Arran Boat Song, a traditional Scottish air. Transposed to A minor for the G/C box. I learned this from the playing of John and Phil Cunningham. If you play the same buttons on a D/G, it'll come out in their key of E minor. :)

https://youtu.be/3-e4U8AN00c

[playandteach]

Nice to see another Serafini in action. Great sound.

[BobM]

Nicely done. The Serafini sounds fine, and no thirds on the LH? I've been checking out some Serafini boxes, and the man himself is a fine player with an uncompromising presentation to camera.

[David A Hill]

Nicely done. The Serafini sounds fine, and no thirds on the LH? I've been checking out some Serafini boxes, and the man himself is a fine player with an uncompromising presentation to camera.

You're right Bob: no thirds :) I like Marc. He's making me a Darwin III at the moment. If you phone him, you'll find he's genuinely approachable and helpful. It would be interesting to know whether you go for a Sérafini and for which model. :) Thanks for your kind comment.

[David A Hill]

Nice to see another Serafini in action. Great sound.

The Darwin's under construction too. That one should do mi bonce in for a good while.

[playandteach]

I've been prompted to record something in split screen, and thought I'd use this reawakened theme to record Le Petit Bal de la Marine with a countermelody.
I didn't use a metronome as I wanted some flexibility. Editing was surprisingly difficult as my compute splutters on play back with 2 video tracks running. That makes Gary's work on the video editing more impressive as I was guessing that the parts lined up ok.
Again, not aiming at perfect takes - just an opportunity to get a tune up to a certain standard before moving on. And just camera audio.

[Tone Dumb Greg]

...Editing was surprisingly difficult as my computer splutters on play back with 2 video tracks running...

Have you tried recording video with a lower definition?

[playandteach]

I'm not clear on these things. The camera I use is 50fps and 1620 x1080, I have another camera which runs 29 fps (actually 29.9ish) but that leaves blurs, and records in 1440 x 1080 which gives a different image size. It might well be possible to change my first camera settings, but I've never found the time to experiment.
Also my computer is now loaded with recordings and partial recordings for school use (I need to have a clean up) and that might be slowing it down. I've got 8gb of RAM - maybe that's an easy upgrade.

[Anahata]

I'm not clear on these things. The camera I use is 50fps and 1620 x1080, I have another camera which runs 29 fps (actually 29.9ish) but that leaves blurs, and records in 1440 x 1080 which gives a different image size. It might well be possible to change my first camera settings, but I've never found the time to experiment.
Also my computer is now loaded with recordings and partial recordings for school use (I need to have a clean up) and that might be slowing it down. I've got 8gb of RAM - maybe that's an easy upgrade.

Your 50fps camera may well have a 30fps or similar (25, 29.9) setting, which would immediately halve the amount of work for your editor, and maybe further reduction in work if it's a lower resolution setting too.

8GB is a reasonable amount of memory, but I'd guess that video editing can make good use of more if it's available.

The volume of file space taken up by other projects shouldn't be a problem unless the remaining free space on the disk is getting really small, in which case fragmentation could be kicking in.

One trick that may help with your video editor is to convert your camera videos to a lower resolution format and/or one that uses less severe compression. It may seem counterintuitive to make bigger files, but less processor power is used to decompress them, which your video editor has to do while it's playing the files. FFMPEG, or the Windows front end for it WinFF, free to download, will do the conversion. I used to have to do that a few years ago when both hardware and software were more weedy than they are now.

[David A Hill]

I've been prompted to record something in split screen, and thought I'd use this reawakened theme to record Le Petit Bal de la Marine with a countermelody.
I didn't use a metronome as I wanted some flexibility. Editing was surprisingly difficult as my compute splutters on play back with 2 video tracks running. That makes Gary's work on the video editing more impressive as I was guessing that the parts lined up ok.
Again, not aiming at perfect takes - just an opportunity to get a tune up to a certain standard before moving on. And just camera audio.

Great tune that, Pete. Looking forward to hearing the results.

[playandteach]

Hi David, the link is hidden in the blue font of the title. Here it is without the hiding:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8VVpWRM13w

[Anahata]

Hi David, the link is hidden in the blue font of the title. Here it is without the hiding:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8VVpWRM13w

I missed it too. That's lovely!

[Tone Dumb Greg]

I missed it too. Beautiful.